Never Survives First Contact

You always start, when you’re making a new project, with some semblance of a plan, even if it’s a plan that only exists in your mind. You do your best to follow it, but then things happen, and they aren’t always just complications. This is particularly problematic for virtually every author. When you’re writing a story, you only develop a real sense of what the story’s going to be about two-fifths of the way in. The story has its own mind; you’re simply the vessel it settled for in its incarnation. If you’re like me, you keep writing the story as if nothing had happened, knowing in the back of your head all the extra work that’s going to be necessary in editing the earlier portion to make it in-line with the latter. That’s fine. That’s good. We all go through it. My problem, and it’s a recurring problem, is not merely in what my story wants to be, but in what sort of form it wants to take place. For example, you start writing a few poems, but then one hundred poems later you accidentally made enough for a whole collection that could be made into a book.

My problem is similar.

Gregory Samuels Part 2 [working title] is fixing to be large enough to be a book in its own right. If that happens, I might just have to put its predecessor in a book, save for the fact that its predecessor isn’t really long enough to bother with the spine of a book. As such, if this part two is large enough to become a book, then it must necessarily include its predecessor within the same volume.

The other problem is somewhat more problematic. The Gregory Samuels series has always been intended to be released in serial format, online, for free. There’s a few ways of working around this; it just complicates things.

That said, if things have gone well, as of the publishing of this status update, Gregory Samuels Part 2 should be finished.

That is, the rough draft should be finished.

Did you ever know some writers like to call the rough draft the “vomit draft?”

I have to maintain a certain report with the various social groups in which I’m a mostly unwilling participant. I’ll be honest. Having to negotiate different political beliefs has proven, time and time again, more trouble than it’s worth. I made a promise not to engage in any crap tossing of any nature on the subject, a promise to myself–so I have to keep it. But as regards matters of the law, which respects no political opinion, I have to make a certain admission. I’ll announce that I don’t think any government official, elected or appointed, should have the right to just unilaterally release a convicted felon from prison. That’s up to an appeals court. That’s where it’s acceptable. Nevertheless, people are up in arms about a certain transitioning whistle-blower that released information regarding extremely felonious conduct both perpetrated and concealed by the government, and this transitioning GI went to prison for it. Those responsible didn’t see a day behind bars. And while he did violate the uniform code of conduct, and I think he should be punished appropriately, I also don’t like the government using the law to conceal information regarding its own abuse thereof. If any man or woman should find compelling evidence that anyone anywhere has done something felonious, including the government, that person has a civic responsibility to produce it before the courts. Ours is a government of laws and not people, and no-one should forget that. As it is, there’s no sufficient system within the government for government employees to function as whistle-blowers when such compromising information should come to light.

I’ll try not to darken the tone that often in the future. I hope you can forgive me. I prefer to keep things a little more kind-spirited and devil-may-care.

Have a picture of yet another surly cat.

Post Script: The rough draft is finished. 77 Chapters. The plot was not what I had anticipated, but as I mentioned before, it rarely happens as you expect it.